Off Kilter.

Volume 135: The Five Hallmarks of Strategy.
Searching for the signal in the noise of brand marketing and design.

1. The Five Hallmarks of Strategy.

tl;dr: Reflecting on my own field of endeavor.

Since I’m in the midst of a couple of meaty strategy projects, I figured I might reflect a little on the subject of brand strategy.

In some ways, it’s a strange subject to talk about because while an inordinate number of people self-identify as strategists (I refuse to use the term), strategy as a concept remains fuzzy for many.

Part of the problem, I think, is that unlike design, which is an understood craft with a set of baseline principles, rules, and a common language, brand strategy remains the Wild West of whatever people want it to be. As a result, anyone can claim to be a strategist irrespective of background, experience, or education, and there seems to be little in the way of shared language, principles, or rules.

And while this can be liberating, it also creates the conditions for snake-oil sellers, confidence tricksters, box tickers, and the abjectly naive to proliferate, not to mention the holding company poo-bahs who’ll happily append “strategist” to any job title so they can charge $100+ per hour more for the exact same services.

So, what are we really dealing with?

Well, I think strategy has five hallmarks that act as a pretty good guide.

1. Strategy deals solely with the future.
   The focus of strategy is to help shape what we will do, not what we are doing or have done previously. Of all the many thousands of words expended on the concept, this is perhaps the most important to remember because it makes it unique as a business function. It’s also why CEOs get paid the big bucks because investors base today’s corporate valuation on expectations of its future performance. This means leadership is expected to set a strategy that will enable the business to at least live up to and, ideally, outperform these expectations.
   

2. Strategy is about risk and probabilities, not guarantees.
   Because strategy deals solely with the future and because the future is fundamentally unknowable, strategy’s primary goal is to increase the likelihood of future success rather than guarantee it, which means we must form an analysis of probabilities and risk rather than think in guarantees. This matters because there are rarely obvious black-and-white answers to strategic questions. Instead, strategy, by definition, lives in the ambiguous world of grey-area. At its heart, strategy always asks fuzzy questions of the risk you’re willing to accept relative to an estimated probability of success. This is why people uncomfortable with ambiguity and shades of grey rarely deliver compelling strategies.
   

3. Strategy is a creative act dependent upon the imagination.
   When we think about strategy, we often think about McKinsey consultants, data, analysis, etc. And while strategic analysis benefits greatly from a deeply analytical approach, it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition for strategy formulation. By contrast, strategy formulation depends more on creativity and imagination. It requires us to imagine sometimes radically different future states, hold competing visions of this future in our heads simultaneously, and work backward toward the pathways to getting there. Nevertheless, rational, analytical, data-driven strategy formulation is popular, not because it’s correct, but because empiricizing something as fuzzy, ambiguous, and unknowable as the future makes it seem clearer, more controllable, and more guaranteed, and thus more buyable.
   

4. Strategy enables hard choices
   To quote a former business school professor:
   
   “Strategy is resource allocation. If we had infinite resources, we’d have no need for strategy. We’d just try everything and double down on what works. But since nobody has infinite resources, we must prioritize, and this act of prioritization is strategy.”
   
   The critical element here is that strategy not only guides what we will do but also what we won’t. And sometimes, what we don’t do is vastly more important than what we do, do. And, while the choices to be made might be hard, the strategic guidance that enables these choices must be clear, simple, and direct. Strategies that are too complex and that lack clarity and simplicity cannot, by definition, be good guides of choice.
   

5. Strategy is systemic in nature.
   Finally, because strategy provides direction and helps dictate organizational priorities and choices, it is systemic in nature. As a result, delivery against strategy rarely applies to only a single function within an organization, instead depending more on the interplay of different groups working together in concert toward a common intent rather than pulling in different directions.

Now, what’s notably missing from the above is a specific focus on brand strategy (this course is garbage, BTW, don’t waste your money on it), brand purpose (distinctly mixed results in practice), “Why” (dangerous claptrap) any discussion of distinct frameworks (too many to list), or any of the boringly asinine dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments so common in our field, like the fight over “planned” versus “emergent” strategy. (Like most things, it isn’t a binary choice; you need a little of both). That’s because these hallmarks apply to all forms of strategy, irrespective of the specific application.

When we lose sight of these hallmarks, perhaps because we’ve become too focused on filling in a framework, applying a model, being dogmatic about a belief we’ve formed, or simply because we don’t know about them, we lose sight of what it means to be strategic. But, on the other hand, if we constantly step back and use these hallmarks to question ourselves, we can help ensure we stay on track. For example:

1. Am I focusing solely on the future, or am I being dragged into short-term, backward-looking arguments?

2. Am I building up a picture of the risks and probabilities of success? Does my analysis hold up to scrutiny? Do I know where the grey areas are, and am I comfortable with them?

3. Have I applied my imagination and creativity to this task? Have I asked tough enough questions about the strategies being pursued by others? Am I pushing past the obvious? (And if you’re unsure of the obvious, ask ChatGPT to create a strategic recommendation based on your inputs. It’ll handily give you the completely run-of-the-mill answer you’ll now know to avoid).

4. Does my recommendation provide the necessary clarity and simplicity to enable future choice-making by others? Will it help people navigate tough decisions where there might be competing priorities?

5. Are my recommendations systemic in nature? Have I paid enough attention to the cross-functional implications?

If I were to summarize situations I commonly see in the branding world where people lose sight of the five hallmarks of strategy, I’d say the following as a massive over-generalization (my apologies for that):

1. Strategists at larger branding consultancies can tend toward being over-frameworked and under-thought. Meaning they spend too much time and energy filling in frameworks and following process steps to hit a deliverable list rather than applying their imagination to solving a tough strategic problem. Their decks are comprehensive and appear rigorous but scratch the surface, and it’s all very predictable.
   
   If you think this might be you, take a step back from your models and frameworks and analyses for a bit and go for a walk, go to a museum, go to an art gallery, step in front of a whiteboard, whatever it takes to put yourself in a position where you can think, create, and imagine. Inspire yourself to get back to basics and then jump past the obvious.
   

2. Strategists at smaller branding consultancies can tend toward delivering tone rather than strategy. Meaning they expend much time and energy in delivering creative inspiration to their design colleagues rather than providing meaningful business guidance to their clients. Their decks have lots of pictures and look pretty but say very little.
   
   If you think this might be you, then you probably need to get more rigorous in your analysis, focus your thinking on what the business needs rather than what your design colleagues want, and focus on the delivery of a strategy that simplifies systemic choices beyond what color, font, imagery, or neat message-line to use.

Anyway, that’s it. Hopefully, you might find this of some assistance.

2. From Bard to Bedrock.

tl;dr: Microsoft & Google seek gold, while Amazon sells shovels.

Please bear with me for a second. I’m sorry, I’m going to talk about AI for a bit. Yes, yes, I know. We’re at the peak of the hype cycle, and it’s the last thing anyone wants to read about. But there are some really interesting strategic moves worth paying attention to.

First things first, there’s an arms race afoot. AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), isn’t just the next big thing in tech; it’s the current big thing. And, while we don’t yet know all the implications, the one thing we do know is that it’s a very big deal in $$ terms, and big players are making big moves accordingly. (As an aside, all the money pouring into AI startups right now, even as the rest of the VC landscape turns distinctly frigid, is likely to drag San Francisco and Silicon Valley more generally out of its post-COVID, post-everything-bubble funk, which is a good thing).

In a 2019 act of strategic spread-betting, Microsoft invested heavily in OpenAI. This was a strategic investment in the sense that Microsoft couldn’t know exactly what would happen some years later, but it wanted to buy an option on the future just in case LLMs lived up to their potential. I call this strategic spread-betting rather than strategic foresight because companies like Microsoft tend to make many such investments. Some payoff, many don’t. In this case, investing in OpenAI was a smart move. But don’t be fooled by survivor bias into thinking this was a profoundly Nostradamus-like act. In these situations, the bigger payoff comes from being a smart spread-better, not from narrowly targeted predictions.

Anyway, Microsoft has used this investment in OpenAI to begin aggressively embedding LLM capabilities across its portfolio of offerings, which means it’s pursuing a product leadership strategy aimed at defensively reinforcing product leadership where it already has it (Office, Github) and offensively creating product leadership where it doesn’t (Bing). By using OpenAI technology to enhance its Office and Github offerings, it defends itself against the competition while effectively maintaining leadership. And by introducing LLM capabilities into the Bing search product, it gets to claim leadership in a business category it’s previously been a distant second in. Add this up, and it means that for the first time in a long time, Microsoft is putting real pressure on Google…

… This means Google is now under much pressure to respond quickly while finding itself distinctly behind the eight-ball. This is notable because until now, Google has operated with the complacency of believing itself to be the leader in LLM R&D without feeling the need to commercialize it aggressively. That complacency now looks to be a strategic error. For Google, the strategic challenge is twofold. First, because it chose to develop LLM technology in-house rather than make a strategic investment the way Microsoft did, it now feels forced to have a product in the wild to compete with ChatGPT, which it called Bard. Unfortunately, because this was a forced choice rather than a considered act, it’s a poor product and launched like a damp squib. Much work will need to be done to catch the early mover momentum OpenAI has now built up, and it may never get there. Second, Google has been loathe to introduce LLM technology to search because it will cannibalize the cash cow of search advertising. But, again, Microsoft enhancing Bing with LLM forces Google to respond. Just last week, it was reported that Samsung might switch the default search on its devices from Google to Bing, which is an existential threat to Google should others do the same.

The net, net is that by investing years in advance in OpenAI and by now embedding OpenAI technology across its product portfolio, Microsoft has forced Google into a reactionary position it doesn’t want to be in. As a result, nothing Google has done with LLM commercially to date looks strategic. While this may change, businesses forced into reactionary positions rarely wind up winning an arms race for the future.

So, what about that other tech behemoth, Amazon, or more specifically, its massive cloud computing business, AWS?

Unlike Google, which has felt compelled to react directly to the Microsoft/OpenAI challenge, AWS has decided to move in a completely different direction. One that at first glance seems much closer to its history, and that might also turn out to be a very smart strategic move.

To use an analogy, while Microsoft/OpenAI and Google are panning for gold at the beginning of a gold rush, AWS, through the introduction of Bedrock, has decided to sell picks and shovels to the prospectors. And that’s very much in keeping with its history and strategy.

To understand AWS, you first need to return to the earliest days of cloud computing, which it pioneered. By applying a “swipe your credit card” e-commerce mentality to computing infrastructure, AWS initially attracted small players like Netflix that scaled on its platform, which then led to enterprise buyers paying attention to a new and different infrastructure model, which fast forward to today has led to AWS becoming the 800lb gorilla in cloud computing. As a result, AWS has long been more about what it enables others to do than what it is.

So, in much the same way that AWS provided flexible and scalable cloud computing infrastructure that enabled the formation of new businesses and applications, it now seeks to offer a flexible and scalable means for companies to develop their own LLM-enhanced applications. Rather than building its own ChatGPT, Bard competitor, or specific applications using LLM, AWS looks more focused on using its massive cloud scale advantage to become the default platform upon which businesses get to build their own. In simple terms, as more prospectors seek gold in the hills alongside Microsoft/OpenAI and Google, AWS won’t be up there searching alongside them; instead, it’s setting up shop at the foot of the mountain, happily selling picks and shovels.

So, where does that leave us? Right now, it looks like Microsoft and AWS have distinct strategies around LLM technology. Each making strategic trade-offs and bets it believes will best suit its own unique capabilities and business needs.

And Google is flailing.

Thank you for reading all the way through. If this email was forwarded to you and you like it, you can subscribe here.

If you’d like to talk about anything brand related, or even just to have a chat, that would be awesome. Please reach out. I particularly enjoy helping people solve tricky brand problems.

Cheers for now.

Paul
President, Invencion

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